Zinke to ask Trump to shrink two more monuments
By Devin Henry - 12/05/17
Zinke to ask Trump to shrink two more monuments | TheHill
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has recommended President Trump shrink the boundaries of two more national monuments, a day after rolling back protected areas in Utah.
A Zinke-led study into national monument declarations says that Trump should shrink Oregon and California’s Cascade-Siskiyou and Nevada's Gold Butte national monuments by small amounts.
Zinke is also recommending Trump change management plans for six other monuments, allowing for additional grazing, ranching, fishing, hunting and other activities in those locations.
Zinke told reporters Tuesday he is “fairly confident” Trump will accept his recommendations.
“I will be in the president’s office multiple times going through specifics of it as time passes,” he said.
Trump on Monday signed proclamations slashing the borders of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments in Utah, reducing them by about 50 percent and 84 percent respectively. It represents the largest rollback of monument declarations in American history.
Environmentalists and tribes have already sued over that decision, arguing the federal Antiquities Act does not give the president the power to reduce previously declared monuments.
But the Trump administration insists the president can do that, and Zinke said Tuesday that Trump was “absolutely right” to order a review of 27 large monument declarations dating back two decades.
“The Antiquities Act was designed to protect rather than prevent, and no president, under the authority of the Antiquities Act, has the authority to arbitrarily remove the public from their lands, reduce public access, reduce hunting and fishing and reduce traditional uses, unless those uses threaten the object,” Zinke said.
“The president was absolutely right in asking for a review.”
The reductions Zinke announced on Tuesday are smaller than those Trump approved on Monday.
At Gold Butte, a 300,000-acre monument in southern Nevada, Zinke proposed reducing some of the designated area near a water district used by local residents to allow for repairs and infrastructure upgrades. He said that “we have not drawn out the maps specifically, but it’s a small percentage of Gold Butte.”
Zinke said federal agencies are still considering what to do with Cascade-Siskiyou, which stretches over the Oregon-California border. Officials believe some of the protected land should be legally set aside for logging rather than monuments, Zinke said, and they’re considering what to do about private land within the monument borders.
Zinke recommended Trump change management plans for six other monuments. Under his proposal, that could allow for expanded timbering in Katahdin Woods and Waters in Maine; commercial fishing in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts, Rose Atoll and Pacific Remote Islands Marine monuments; more grazing access for tribes in New Mexico’s Rio Grande Del Norte; and more coordination with the departments of Homeland Security and of Defense around the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks monument in New Mexico.
Zinke is also proposing Trump create three monuments: at Camp Nelson, an 1863 Union Army site in Kentucky; the Jackson, Miss., home of civil rights leader Medgar Evers; and the Badger II Medicine Area, a 130,000-acre section of the Lewis and Clark National Forest in his home state of Montana.
Trump slashes Utah land protections
By Timothy Cama and Devin Henry - 12/04/17
Trump slashes Utah land protections | TheHill
President Trump on Monday shrank two massive, controversial national monuments in Utah, potentially opening thousands of acres to drilling, mining and grazing.
The reductions erase efforts to preserve the monuments by President Obama and President Clinton, and represent the largest-ever rollback of protected areas in history, environmental groups say.
Trump signed two proclamations, one scaling back Obama’s 1.4-million-acre Bears Ears National Monument to 220,000 acres – an 84 percent reduction – and another reducing Clinton’s 1.9-million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument to 1 million acres.
Both monuments in southern Utah have long been opposed by state leaders. Obama and Clinton created them under the Antiquities Act, which gives presidents authority to unilaterally protect any federally owned area from development, with few restrictions.
“Some people think that the natural resources of Utah should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington. And guess what? They’re wrong,” Trump said during a visit to Salt Lake City where he made the announcement.
“The families and communities of Utah know and love this land the best and you know the best how to take care of your land.”
Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante had been at the center of a national debate over monuments and their permanence, fueled by an executive order earlier this year in which Trump asked Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review dozens of previously created monuments.
“Past administrations have severely abused the purpose, spirit and intent of a century-old law known as the Antiquities Act. This law requires that only the smallest necessary area be set aside for special protection as national monuments,” Trump said.
“Unfortunately, previous administrations have ignored the standards and used the law to lock up hundreds of millions of acres of land and water under strict government control.”
Trump made the announcement in the Utah State Capitol alongside the state’s entire Republican congressional delegation. Sens. Mike Lee and Orrin Hatch both spoke before Trump, praising his decision.
“President Trump is many things: he’s the commander in chief, the master dealmaker, and a wildly successful billionaire,” said Hatch, 83, whom Trump is urging to run for reelection next year.
“But he’s also a man who comes through on his commitments to the people of Utah.”
Trump has the support of conservatives and industries that want to use the land.
“We are grateful that today’s action will allow ranchers to resume their role as responsible stewards of the land and drivers of rural economies,” Craig Uden, president of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, said in a statement.
But Trump faced immediate backlash from environmentalists and American Indian tribes who say his actions threaten sensitive, culturally significant areas. They also see it as an attack more generally on public lands and conservation.
“This is nothing more than political score settling from an administration that doesn’t seem to comprehend the extraordinary value these lands hold for Native American communities and all Americans,” Brian Sybert, executive director of Conservation Lands Foundation, said in a statement.
